skin there, as if she were checking whether she was skinny enough. Which, in fact, he knew was exactly what she was doing. She did that, touched the parts of her body she didn’t like, when she felt insecure about being seen—in particular, being seen by a guy she liked.
“You’re so beautiful, Lia,” he said—or tried to say; his voice ground through a bunch of gravel in the middle.
She blushed and turned her head, closing her eyes. Her bra was askew, one cup up, that tit bared, the other cup still in place, but it didn’t look awkward. All he could notice was that mouthwatering tit, still tight and pink and a little wet from his attention.
Alex leaned down again, over her, resting on his hand, and caught her chin with his other, turning her to face him again, so she could see his truth. “So. Beautiful.”
A smile shimmered at the corners of her mouth. That perfect pout of a mouth. So sweet. He lowered to her, shifting his support to his elbow, and kissed her, pulling her plump pink bottom lip between his teeth. Again, she made that quiet little kittenish moan.
That sound strummed a nerve straight to his cock.
Reaching behind her again, he found the hooks of her bra and released them. She helped him rid her of it without breaking their kiss.
Or his kiss, really. Lia had made the first gesture, but since then, she’d mostly let him to things to her. Except to move her tongue with his, and try to get his hoodie off—and those gorgeous little whimpery moans he could actually feel—she hadn’t really touched him herself. Only reacted to his touch.
He pulled back and looked down at her. Her bare tits were pressed under his bare chest, and he couldn’t bring himself to give up that wonder of a sensation, but he lifted his head. “Stop me if we’re going too far. I’ll stop.”
A hard swallow before she answered. “I don’t want to stop.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. But … say my name?”
Thinking that was weird—was she afraid he’d forgotten?—he cocked his head and couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Lia. Lovely Lia.”
“My whole name.”
Tension zapped him hard enough to make his glutes cramp. He’d made a decision not to care, not to think about who she was, who her father was; now she wanted him to call it out loud and remind them both. But when he hesitated, her insecurity flared, and he could not fucking resist that sad look. Damn.
“Lia Pagano,” he said.
Having that out in the open made what was happening, what he was choosing, more real—but didn’t change his mind. Maybe he wouldn’t be killed. Maybe he’d get hung on a hook again, this time subject to Tony for punishment. Well, he’d survived that once before. He still had nightmares and flashbacks about it, still had scars from it, but he’d survived it.
She smiled and put her hands up, cupping his face, pushing her fingers into his hair. “Alex Di Pietro. I don’t want to stop. I need something good to happen.”
Yeah, this was worth whatever came next.
“And this is good?” he asked, sounding insecure even to his own ears.
“I think so. Do you?”
“I do.” They needed to stop talking; it was making them both squirmy and pathetic. So he shifted down and brought his head back in line with her tits. “I think it’s really good,” he muttered before he tasted the one he hadn’t sampled yet.
This time her moan was almost a word, a gasping little oh. Now, she was touching him—her hands were in his hair, on his shoulders, his back, touching him everywhere they could reach, and her legs writhed, slipping between and around his, one sometimes lifting high to hook at his waist, then sliding back down. All her gyrations rammed her body up against his in all the right ways, so her hipbone, her thigh, sometimes even her knee pressed and dragged along the ridge of his cock, constrained in his jeans. That maybe should have hurt, but it very much did not.
Did he have a condom? Fuck! He had a box at home, which he took from before he went out on a date or just with the intent to pull, and he made a habit to keep an emergency backup in his wallet, but in Providence he didn’t have much (make that any—or so he’d thought) opportunity for a fuck, so he hadn’t checked in a while.